Ensuring the Enduring Happiness of Katniss Everdeen
by Gamemakers
Summary: Facing twelve weeks of summer without her best friend, Posy knows she needs a project. At first, hunting with Katniss seems like enough, but when she realizes just how lonely her new friend really is, Posy is determined to find a more permanent companion for Katniss. She's even got a man picked out: Peeta Mellark. Now, all that remains is convincing them they need each other.


It seemed wrong that summer, the time of year where there were the fewest things to do, also had the longest days. At seven and eight, and for most of her ninth year, Posy had not thought much of it. Now that she was ten, however, that observation grated at her. Yes, she could have filled her days in the same way she had in past summers, with pick-up kickball in the town square or playing pretend in the meadow with Paige and Senna, but she felt too big to play kickball with the five-year-olds and she and Senna had gotten into a fight the last day of school that neither of them had yet apologized for. Considering that she hadn't been the one who told Mrs. Clearney about the insect case, Posy had no intention of saying sorry first. Paige and Senna didn't agree. Being right felt nice, but it was also boring when nobody else felt like being right with you.

And that boredom was what brought her to this point. Katniss always left the town early, a full hour before the few remaining coal miners headed out for the day shift in the mines. She spent at least three hours out in the woods before returning, usually with at least a couple animals or a big basket of berries in tow. Katniss had amazing focus, an incredible ability to tune out everything around her that wasn't immediately related to the task at hand, and that kind of concentration must have contributed to her success as a hunter.

It also made her really easy to follow. Posy had been trailing her for at least half an hour before a tree root decided to grab her by the ankle and sent her crashing to the ground. "Oof!"

Katniss whirled around, weapon raised. "Who's there?" She didn't sound nearly as friendly now as she did when she and Mom haggled over her meat and berries.

"It's me. Please don't shoot me."

"Posy?" Katniss moved a few steps closer. "Posy Hawthorne, is that you?"

"Yeah." She sat up. Her ankle didn't hurt too badly, which she took as a good sign.

Katniss pushed a few branches out of the way to get a better look at her. "You all right? What are you doing out here?"

"I'm okay." She accepted the hand Katniss stretched out and let the woman pull her to her feet. "I, um, I was –"

"You were following me," Katniss supplied. She shrugged, but that didn't make the questioning stop. "Does your mother know where you are?"

"Kind of." At Katniss' raised eyebrow, she continued, "I mean, I didn't tell her where I was going, but she didn't ask either. I don't usually have to tell her anyway. I'm old enough to watch myself."

"As evidenced by the fact that you think it's a good idea to follow someone with a weapon into the woods." Well, when she put it that way, it didn't sound like a good idea, but Posy could twist anything into something terrible with the right set of words. "What if I hadn't realized it was you? What if I'd assumed you were a deer, or a squirrel, or some man who'd followed me out here when I heard you? Did you even think about that?"

"Why would you shoot a man?"

Katniss huffed. "That's not the point. What were you thinking?"

"I don't know. I was bored."

"You should really let people know you're there before you start following them."

"Okay." Posy waited a second for Katniss to tell her to go away, but the words never came. "So, now that I'm here, can I stay with you?"

Katniss looked pained. "I guess so."

"And I can come with you tomorrow?" The words came out in a rush of excitement.

"Don't push your luck."

* * *

After a week, Posy stopped asking. She showed up every morning at Katniss' house in the Victors Village, and they went together into the woods for the next few hours. Katniss taught her how to use a bow, make traps, and skin squirrels. Gale had promised to teach her all that when he came home last March, but something had gone wrong on the project he was working on in Two, and he'd had to return a week early. That seemed to happen a lot with Gale.

Katniss claimed that she only let Posy stay because her nimble little fingers were better at tying the intricate series of knots that kept the traps open until a squirrel wandered inside. Posy had a very different theory: she wanted the company. Katniss smiled and joked. She got up and went about her day and didn't mope around the way a few of the people who hadn't completely returned from the war yet did. Still, when she didn't realize Posy was watching, the smile would slip away, and the loneliness would creep back in. Posy understood loneliness. She saw it in Mom every time the anniversary of Dad's death rolled around, in the entire district during those terrible days in July. Everyone kept busy, finished their tasks, kept their smiles glued on, and suffered together silently.

And in any case, Katniss was only about two inches taller than Posy, and her fingers weren't much larger either.

* * *

The solution came to her three weeks into summer vacation. Posy wanted to call it a revelation, but when she looked the word up in the dictionary, she found that revelations usually came all at once. While the basic plan came in one burst one night while the Hawthornes were watching television, it took a while to fill in the details, especially the most important one. See, while it was obvious Katniss needed more permanent company that Posy could provide, one couldn't take the matter of who would be providing that company lightly.

She went about it the way that Gale said he went about solving problems at work. On a clean sheet in a mostly-used notebook left over from last year, she listed every man in District Twelve between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five. Then over the next few days, she wrote down the pros and cons of each one. Well, not quite each one, as she didn't know much of anything about some of them, but she made a good effort to give everyone a fair opportunity.

But when she sat down a week later to compare the possibilities, one clear frontrunner came through: Peeta Mellark. He and Katniss had been friends for years. He cooked, painted, and was generally enjoyable to be around. Posy had only managed to find one negative about him, that he might give away all their food to kid who asked for it, but Katniss would always be able to go hunting, so that shouldn't be a problem. The more she thought about it, the more Posy thought that was just generosity, which didn't belong on the cons list anyway. Also, she'd heard more than one of the older girls talk about how handsome Peeta Mellark was, and Posy tended to agree with their assessment. With any luck, Katniss did too.

* * *

Usually, Katniss was just about ready to leave when Posy arrived. They would finish packing Katniss' bag together, put on some bug spray to ward off the worst of the mosquitoes, and be on their way in less than fifteen minutes. Today, though, none of her equipment waited outside, and the neighborhood sat silent and still. Posy wondered for a moment if she had arrived too late and Katniss had gone off without her. She hoped Katniss hadn't, that she would accept Posy being a couple minutes late after showing up early every day for weeks, but sometimes people didn't think about things like that when they made decisions. Her stomach clenched up as went up to the front porch to ring the doorbell.

"I'll be down in a second!" Katniss' voice sounded sleepy and far away. "Give me a minute, Posy."

It took Katniss a lot longer than a minute to come to the door, and even then, it wasn't the right door. Her loose hair bounced around her shoulders as she hurried down the front steps of Peeta's house. "You're here earlier than I expected."

"No, you're late." Posy always left at 6:25, the same time Mom left to go to work, and she never got to the Victors Village after 6:45. She really doubted she was the one running off-schedule, especially after one considered how wrinkled Katniss' clothes were. She must have been in a rush even before she went over to Peeta's for breakfast. "But it's okay," she added. No reason to make Katniss feel bad about something that didn't bother Posy at all.

"Hey," Katniss said. "If you want to go with me, you go by my schedule, and I say you're early."

Posy rolled her eyes at that, and Katniss snorted in laughter as she started to braid her hair. Her fingers moved so quickly that Posy half-expected them to end up knotted together. Instead, she had a neat, finished braid that extended all the way down to her waist done in less than a minute. "Can you teach me how to do that?"

"What?"

"Braid my hair."

"You've already got a braid."

"Yeah, but it's not like yours. Mine just goes straight down from my head, see?" She tugged at the offending braid.

Katniss was going to get some weird wrinkles on one side of her forehead if she kept doing that with her eyebrows. That's what Mom said every time Posy made that face, anyway. "I think we've got gravity to thank for that."

"No." Posy traced along Katniss' braid. "Yours goes sideways around your head and then drops diagonal over your shoulder. I want my hair to do that, but Mom can't figure out how you do it."

"I can braid it, if you want, but we're already running late, so teaching you how to do it'll have to wait."

Posy undid her hair tie and turned around so Katniss could see her hair. "Are you gonna go over to Peeta's again for breakfast tomorrow?"

"Breakfast?"

"Like you did today."

"Oh, um…" She twisted around and caught a hint of Katniss blush before the woman nudged her back. "Cut it out. I need to focus." There were a few seconds of silence as Katniss finished up the braid. "Anyway, tomorrow's Monday. Peeta will be at the bakery by four, so I doubt I'll be getting a breakfast invite."

Well, it would have been good for them to see each other again, but Posy would have to make the best of it. "So if I show up a couple minutes early, can you teach me then?"

"Sure."

* * *

"No, I'm not going to pull you too!" Posy swatted at River, but the boy dodged and stuck his tongue out at her. "I can't pull you and the flour, and if I don't get the flour to Peeta by noon, he's gonna get mad." She couldn't imagine Peeta ever getting angry about something as little as that, but four-year-old River didn't need to know that. She lowered her voice. "He might even take away the wagon."

Grey eyes widened in pure terror. The red wagon emblazoned with _Mellark's Bakery_ had been a mainstay of childhood entertainment in Twelve ever since Peeta bought it three years ago. Big enough to fit four fifty-pound bags of flour – or comfortably seat three children – whenever Peeta didn't need it to cart shipments from the train station to the bakery, it could be found being paraded in circles around the square. Without it, the long days of summer would have been dreary indeed.

Knowing when her trap had been perfectly baited, she offered a solution. "But if you're good and don't bother me the entire way, I'll make sure you get the first turn after Peeta's done."

River gave a very serious little nod and climbed out of the Red Rider. "Okay." He followed dutifully behind her the entire way back to the square, his eyes never leaving the wagon.

Peeta was waiting for them at the door when they arrived. "You guys made good time. How's Hatcher doing?"

"He's doing all right. He said he had a tight schedule today, so he won't be coming into town." Posy was pretty proud that she remembered the engineer's words verbatim.

"Yeah, that's what it looked like from the schedule. Maybe next time." He hoisted one of the bags onto his shoulder. "You guys can come in, if you want. I've got cookies that just came out of the oven."

River didn't seem too sure about leaving the wagon, but the dual promise of shade and cookies lured him inside. Anyway, with three bags of flour still sitting in the Red Rider, nobody was going to be making off with it too soon.

A dull _thud_ came from the pantry when Peeta dropped the flour. He wiped off his hands on a rag and picked out the two biggest cookies off the cooling rack. "One for Miss Posy for being an excellent delivery girl," he said, holding one out to her. She accepted it with a smile. "And one for Mister River for being a good helper."

Posy wanted to interject, tell him that no, River hadn't helped, just annoyed her the entire way to the station, but she had received a cookie for jobs she'd had no part in more than once herself. It was really only being a good friend to pass that on. "Thank you!" River stuffed a giant bite of the sugar cookie into his mouth and sprinted outside.

Peeta laughed, a big warm sound that matched the sunny day. "I suppose I should clear out the wagon for him. You get yourself some water, all right Posy? I don't want you to get dehydrated after that."

She didn't have to stand on her tiptoes anymore to reach the glasses. That felt like victory.

By the time he finished carrying in the flour, she was finished with her cookie and halfway done with her water. "Your hair looks nice today," Peeta remarked when he came back from the pantry. He gave her braid a gentle tug, and she giggled.

Posy saw her chance. "Katniss taught me how to do it!"

"You did a nice job."

"She's really good at hair and a lot of other things too."

"That she is." Peeta had a really nice smile. Posy wasn't sure if it was because he had all his teeth and they were very straight and very clean-looking or because he got little dimples when he did it. Either way, she liked it, and hopefully, Katniss did too. "So, what's going on in your neighborhood these days? I haven't seen your mom in a few days. Anything new with her?"

As she began recounting the geese incident, Posy had a thought she had never before considered. If she couldn't get Katniss and Peeta together, she might just have to marry Peeta Mellark herself.

* * *

"Have you ever been to the lake?"

"What lake?"

"There's a big one a few miles out. My dad used to take me there when I was younger." Katniss rarely mentioned her father. She didn't often talk about any of her family members, and Mom had warned Posy not to ask about them, which she still thought strange. Her memories of Thirteen were faded and fuzzy, but Katniss' sister still shone through. That dismal place had not dimmed Prim's smile as it had the adults. Posy remembered her as a studious child who spent more time with her books than the other children, but she also recalled in vivid detail being Prim's helper during a game of hide and seek in one of Thirteen's enormous storage rooms, listening carefully for any sign of her brothers then racing through a gale of laughter when Vick made a run for it. She hoped Katniss remembered that Prim too, not just the ashes that rested under a granite marker in Twelve's small cemetery.

"What do you want to do there?"

"I was thinking I could teach you to swim. It'll be warm enough by now that it should be pretty comfortable."

Posy's eyes widened. "Really? I didn't know you could swim!" Gale had promised that she could visit him for two weeks next summer, and that he'd take her to one of the mountain springs that laced around District Two. Posy didn't know if they were deep or warm enough to swim in, but she'd like to know how just in case.

"I'm taking that as a yes?" Katniss prodded.

"Yeah!" Posy realized an instant later the opportunity that had presented itself. "Maybe Peeta can come with us?"

Katniss' forehead crinkled when she frowned. "Why would we bring Peeta?"

Posy shrugged. "He's nice."

"Yeah, but he's also right about the loudest person ever."

She had Katniss on a point of logic there, which was a nice change. "You said we weren't hunting, so why would it matter that he's loud?"

"Point taken, but why do you want Peeta to come with us in the first place?"

"Tomorrow's Sunday, so he won't be in the bakery. Maybe he'll want something to do."

"You can ask him if you want."

No, that wouldn't work at all. It had to look like Katniss' idea. "Maybe it'd be better if you asked him? Just so he doesn't think I'm inviting him without asking you first," she explained.

"All right, I'll ask him. I'm seeing him for dinner tonight anyway."

Posy mentally crossed another step off her plan. A day at the lake with no distractions? Better than she could have hoped.

* * *

"You're gonna have to keep up with us, or we'll leave you behind."

"And here I thought you were starting to like me," Peeta deadpanned. Posy was impressed that he still had the energy to be sassy. She had gone out into the woods with Katniss every day for close to two months, and her legs burned after three hours of hiking. The pack bumped against her back with every other step, and she bet she would find a bruise there when she got ready for bed tonight.

Katniss grinned. "Well, that was your mistake." She pushed ahead, leaving Posy and Peeta behind. Mom always said that kids had too much energy, but she must never have gone hiking with Katniss.

Posy leaned in closer to Peeta. "Don't worry, I'll stick around if she tries to leave you. She won't abandon both of us."

"Thanks, Posy," he laughed. Then his voice dropped to little more than a whisper. "And anyway, I think we've got her. She put all the food in my pack."

Posy smiled so widely that it hurt. "You have the cookies?"

"Yeah, but we've got to save them for the picnic later, okay? I don't think Katniss'll kill me, but I don't really want to take the chance either."

"You'd better not give me an excuse. You never know what I'll do with it." Katniss' voice wafted down from the top of the hill.

"Eavesdropping isn't nice." Peeta winked at Posy, who giggled. By the time they reached the bend and Katniss came back into view, both were completely composed. "How close are we, Katniss?"

She turned around. "Why don't the two of you get up here and take a look?"

Posy dug into that last reserve of energy she had and jogged up to the top of the hill. Her mouth fell open when she saw the enormous expanse of blue-green before her. The sun glistened off of the water, jewel-like and beautiful. Beside the lake sat a small cabin, really more of a shack, but the little wooden frame with the faded red door looked more inviting even than the displays put up in the storefronts around New Years. "You can go on ahead," Katniss said, and her voice ripped Posy from her stupor. Without another thought, she was racing down towards the beach, heavy pack and its uncomfortable bumping completely forgotten. "Be careful with the cabin! I don't know what kind of critters might have decided to set up shop!"

Besides a few dead spiders and a mouse, no animals waited inside. Posy didn't pay them any mind. A cot that reeked of mildew and was riddled with holes left by burrowing animals who thought it was comfier to sleep in a mattress rather than on top of it sat on the ground, and she collapsed onto it, wrinkling her nose at the odor that accompanied her every movement. The cot couldn't keep her interest for long. There was also a stove, which she knew better than to try to turn on without having Katniss look over first but couldn't resist poking at for a few minutes, and a chair that only ever used three of its four legs at any one point. She spent a while trying to figure out whether that was because the floor sloped or the legs weren't the same length and determined it was probably both.

Realizing that neither Peeta nor Katniss had joined her yet, she started outside to check on them. She stopped at the threshold, for just a few yards away, Peeta and Katniss sat at the edge of the lake, just close enough that the waves ran over their toes, his arm around her waist, her head on his shoulder.

Posy quietly moved back into the house, a smile on her face. Whether or not she learned to swim, she considered today a success.


End file.
